Chapter 8
Luca pulled the Escalade up to the curb outside the laundromat. The engine idled with a deep, rhythmic hum.
He turned his head and looked at her. For the first time, he didn't look like Luca Moretti, the king of the North Side. He looked like a man who had spent six years wandering through a frozen landscape, suddenly realizing that fire was still warm.
“Go to sleep, Nina,” he said. His voice was thick.
She opened the door, gathered her bag, and stepped out onto the damp pavement. She paused, leaning back into the open door frame.
“Thursday night,” she said.
Luca blinked. “What?”
“I’m off Thursday night. You’re taking me to dinner. Not D’Agostino’s—their pastries are an insult to the Republic of Italy. A real place. And leave the three Suburbans at home, Moretti. If I see Gus within fifty feet of my pasta, I’m ordering the most expensive bottle on the menu and sticking you with the tip.”
A slow, genuine smile spread across Luca’s face—not the tight, mocking smirk he gave his rivals, but an open, unguarded grin that transformed his features, carving deep, handsome laugh lines around his eyes.
“Seven o'clock,” he said. “Be ready.”
“Don't be late,” she said, and shut the door.
Thursday arrived with a torrential downpour that turned the Chicago streets into black mirrors.
At 6:45 PM, Nina stood in front of the small mirror in her bedroom above the laundromat. She had traded her scrub pants and compression socks for a dark forest-green knit dress that reached her calves, paired with ankle boots and a silver pendant her father had given her for her graduation from UIC nursing school. She had pinned her hair up, letting a few loose tendrils frame her neck.
She felt ridiculous.
She was a thirty-four-year-old charge nurse going to dinner with a man whose name was whispered in federal courtrooms with lowered voices. Her sensible head told her to call in sick, lock the deadbolt, and spend the evening with a bowl of soup and reruns of medical procedurals.
Her hands, however, were perfectly steady.
At 6:58 PM, her buzzer sounded.
Nina walked down the narrow, carpeted stairs and pushed open the heavy front door.
Luca was standing beneath a large black umbrella on the sidewalk. He wasn't wearing his usual double-breasted armor; instead, he wore a dark charcoal cashmere sweater beneath an open black overcoat, rain droplets glistening on his broad shoulders. He had left the fleet behind. At the curb sat a simple, understated dark Audi sedan—clean, quiet, and discreet.